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Growth in US oil output until 2025 will be the strongest seen by any country in the history of crude markets, making it the “undisputed” leader among global producers, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.

Technological advances that have enabled production from US shale oilfields to thrive will lead to growth of 8m barrels a day between 2010 and 2025, surpassing expansion rates enjoyed by any other nation.

“The US will become the undisputed global oil and gas leader for decades to come,” said Fatih Birol, the agency's executive director. The country is expected to account for 80 per cent of the increase in global supply over the same period.

US tight oil production, which includes crude, condensates and natural gas liquids (NGLs) will rise to 13m b/d by 2025, out of total US output of 16.9m b/d.

“The growth in production is unprecedented, exceeding all historical records, even Saudi Arabia after production from the mega Ghawar field or Soviet gas production from the super Siberian fields,” Mr Birol said.

The long-term projections form part of the agency’s annual World Energy Outlook that uses scenarios based on existing energy and climate policies as its main case. The outlook also includes more ambitious scenarios envisaging the action required to reduce carbon emissions and air pollution in line with the Paris climate agreement and the UN’s sustainable development goals.

In a “low oil price” model, where the energy body assesses what it would take to keep oil prices around current levels, US crude output would sustain current growth levels and the world would switch to electric cars at an even more rapid rate. In this case prices would stay between $50-$70 a barrel until 2040, the agency said.

There are currently 2m electric cars on the road and in the agency’s main scenario this would reach 50m in 2025 and close to 300m in 2040. In the low oil price scenario this would have to surge three-fold to 900m by 2040.

Global energy needs will rise more slowly than in the past, according to the main scenario, in large part because of increased efficiency alongside a push towards cleaner fuels. But demand is expected to expand 30 per cent between today and 2040 — the equivalent of adding another China and India to today’s global demand.

Much of this new demand will be met by renewable power, which will contribute to 40 per cent of the increase in primary energy demand to 2040. Renewables, led by wind and solar, will capture two-thirds of global investment in power plants as they become, for many countries, the cheapest source of new generating capacity, the agency said.

Solar will become the biggest source of “green” power by 2040, by which time the share of all renewables in global power generation will reach 40 per cent, led by China and India.

Another theme in the report is the rapid growth in global demand for electricity in coming decades, driven by widening use of home appliances for the expanding middle classes in developing economies and the gradual electrification of transportation.

To meet rising demand, China will need to add the equivalent of today’s US power system to its electricity infrastructure by 2040 and India will need to add one the size of today’s EU. Demand in China from cooling systems alone in 2040 will exceed total electricity demand from Japan today.

The agency also said the growing importance of electricity in the energy market should support growth in demand for gas, which is a cleaner and more flexible source of power generation than coal. This would be good news for large oil and gas groups, such as Royal Dutch Shell and Total SA, which are betting heavily on gas on the assumption that it will continue growing after oil demand eventually goes into decline.

Some 80 per cent of expansion in gas demand was expected to come from developing economies such as China and India, the agency said, but it warned that the growth was not guaranteed because much of the infrastructure needed for gas-fired power generation was not yet in place and competition was increasing from wind and solar power.

“The competitive landscape [for gas] is formidable, not just due to coal but also to renewables, which in some countries become a cheaper form of new power generation than gas by the mid-2020s,” the report said.